SI388: Peak Bubble? Why Markets Feel Different in 2026 ft. Mark Rzepczynski & Alan Dunne
Top Traders Unplugged
Niels Kaastrup-Larsen
4.8 • 712 Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2026
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today Alan and Mark step back from the noise to examine a market environment that feels subtly but meaningfully different. From AI euphoria giving way to harder questions, to gold’s steady rise and a surprising divergence between US and emerging market inflation, the conversation centers on rotation, uncertainty, and shifting assumptions about safety. They explore whether Treasuries still anchor portfolios the way they once did, how fiscal pressures could reshape monetary policy, and why regime thinking matters for systematic investors. Beneath it all is a reminder that correlations change, narratives evolve, and adaptability remains the most durable edge in uncertain markets.
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Episode TimeStamps:
00:00 – Introduction & market check-in
02:52 – February performance: CTAs, trend following & commodities
04:53 – Peak bubble? AI, metals & speculative excess
07:10 – Gold demand, central banks & safe-haven flows
10:40 – The AI narrative shift & tech repricing
13:22 – Global rotation: US vs Europe & emerging markets
15:22 – EM inflation now lower than US — why it matters
21:48 – Why macro still matters (regime thinking vs stock picking)
31:49 – Fiscal vs monetary dominance explained
41:59 – $700B in Treasury issuance — scale of the debt machine
44:51 – Inflation, asset bubbles & fiscal theory
56:45 – Machine learning, regime shifts & why trend following survives
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to join Neil's Kostrup Larson on a raw and honest journey into the world of systematic investing and learn about the most dependable and consistent yet often overlooked investment strategy. |
| 0:13.2 | Welcome to the Systematic Investor Series. |
| 0:26.3 | Welcome back to the latest edition of Top Traders Unplugged, |
| 0:30.8 | where each week we take the pulse of the markets from the perspective of a rules-based investor. |
| 0:35.9 | It's Alan Dunn here, sitting in for Neals, joined by Mark this week. |
| 0:36.6 | Mark, how are you? |
| 0:45.5 | Not too bad. I was just in Chicago the last couple of days. It was 60 degrees Fahrenheit, which for Chicago in February is quite unusual. |
| 0:55.6 | Very nice. Well, I'm in Dublin. It's been raining nonstop for about, I don't know, at least two months it feels like. So I'm off to Miami next week next week niels is already out there obviously we've got big uh big uh i connections hedge fund conference so a lot of people will |
| 1:00.8 | be out there so if you're there say hello uh but looking forward to that and obviously uh yeah |
| 1:05.6 | hopefully we'll see um i'm no doubt we'll see some sunshine in Miami you would expect at this time of year. |
| 1:12.1 | I'm going to say that there's so many hedge fund managers in Miami, Florida this time of year. |
| 1:17.8 | It's almost as though that who's minding to shop if everybody's down in Florida? |
| 1:23.1 | That's right. |
| 1:24.0 | Well, yeah, hopefully it'll be a good week. |
| 1:26.1 | I'm sure it will. |
| 1:27.2 | Lots of meetings and it'll be very busy. |
| 1:31.9 | We always start off with what's on your radar. |
| 1:34.8 | Anything added out of the ordinary catching your attention at the moment? |
| 1:38.6 | Well, everything seems to be out of the ordinary in the last month since the beginning of the year |
| 1:43.5 | between all of the |
| 1:45.0 | bubbles we've had, you know, the craziness and geopolitics. So where do we begin? Hard to say. |
| 1:52.7 | Fair enough. Well, we'll get to all of that in a minute. And I think it makes sense to cover off |
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